Concept & Create Expo

As a passionate believer in developing the innovation, problem finding and design
thinking skills of young people, I tried to contain my excitement in visiting the Concept and Create Expo at ASMS. This concept, led by Feresh (@Feresh99) at the school, had Year 10 students go through a number of processes culminating in this Expo.

With the innovation cycle as a focus, students identified a problem and set to work designing, prototyping, and marketing a solution to demonstrate their learning.

With a teacher headset I tried to cast a critical eye looking for a number of elements in particular the engagement of students, the idea and logistics around using an expo as an final product/assessment tool, what students could express in terms of the experiences they had been through and what they managed to achieve. There was a certainly a lot to look at with 75 displays to get round and a wide range of ideas, more than what was advertised:

At this Expo, students will present their prototyped creations through the use of advanced technologies, including 3D printers, laser cutters, Arduino programming, and any other skills or knowledge that they obtained through CnC to make their ideas a reality!

I was particularly impressed with the simple ideas and my impression was that seemingly small projects, low tech innovations often shone through especially where students had done some initial market research, some problem finding as well as being iterative in the design process.

In terms of logistics, obviously the open spaces of ASMS facilitate such an expo occurring but there was thought gone into getting people around the displays and a healthy amount of variety in how students used the limited space given to them. Use of QR codes on each display that sent visitors through to a simple Google form for assessment and making sure students peer assessed other stalls were also very effective.

All in all, there was a lot of takeaways for any educator in what had been done at the expo. To my mind, pushing students to display their work, present and promote their work to diverse audience members can only induce higher standards particularly when the processes they are expected to be able to talk about are core elements of the intended learning.

I am happy to share more in depth experiences I had on the day including ideas for a ‘drip-free ice cream cone’.